


Doppelganger

by rayghosts



Series: Phic Phight 2020 [6]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: CW for brief mention of suicide, Gen, Phic phight 2020, post-the ultimate enemy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:35:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23930167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayghosts/pseuds/rayghosts
Summary: There was a boy, a monochrome one like Poindexter. This boy was standing by the window, looking out but not really looking. Danny could only see his back, and he had black hair and a lithe form like Danny.Then he turned around, and Danny realized the ghostwasDanny.
Series: Phic Phight 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1690195
Comments: 10
Kudos: 94
Collections: Phic Phight!





	Doppelganger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CatalystOfTheSoul](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatalystOfTheSoul/gifts), [SummersSixEcho](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SummersSixEcho/gifts).



> This is based on two Phic Phight prompts:  
> 1\. catalystofthesoul: "Death and objects."  
> 2\. summerssixecho: "Doppelganger"

Danny didn't know what to do with the suitcase of objects in front of him.

There weren't many items inside. A few clothes, a photograph, laptop, and toy spaceship with a broken wing. The problem was that these were all items that belonged to him--or copies of them, at least. The photograph, depicting their family on a camping trip, was sitting in a frame on his desk. The toy spaceship was at the bottom of one of his drawers, collecting dust since he had left it there years ago. He didn't think he ever picked it up since he was eight.

The objects seemed random, but a deep part of him knew what they had in common. He never thought about it until now, but these are what he would have packed with him if he ever wanted to escape home on a short notice--if he needed to move away, but if bringing anything more would be too painful.

Why would Clockwork give him this? He knew it was Clockwork because the case, when it had appeared in his bed that morning, had a sticky note attached with the time ghost's insignia on it. Was this a warning? But then why give him copies of the items instead of packing up what he already owned?

Unless, Danny thought, these were from a different point in time. The future, maybe. His hand trembled as he picked up the toy spaceship, an object he hadn't touched in years but which held a special place in his heart.

His breath turned to mist. He quickly pocketed the toy and sprung to his feet, spinning to face the ghost that had entered the room. Vlad Plasmius floated before him, the wind from the open window fluttering his cape dramatically.

"Daniel," Vlad greeted.

Danny narrowed his eyes. "What are you doing here?"

"I thought about calling, but I doubted you would pick up."

"Fair. But you could have used the front door, at least."

Vlad's red eyes bore into his, and he felt a chill run down his spine. Something was going on, and he doubted it was a good thing. "This matter concerns you," Vlad told him. "I didn't think it necessary to involve your parents, or anyone else."

Danny's hand tightened around the toy inside his pocket. "This sounds like a trap."

"It isn't," Vlad assured. Something in his tone made Danny believe him.

In the end, Danny followed him. He expected them to go to his mansion in Amity, but their destination was his older mansion back in Wisconsin. Not that it took them long to get there. With how fast Danny'd gotten at flying in ghost form, it only took them minutes to cross the state border and arrive at the castle.

Vlad landed in a hallway, Danny at his heels. He turned to a door. The younger halfa recognized it as the guest room he had stayed in during the college reunion ages ago. Even without entering the room, his ghost sense was alerted, telling him that a ghost was inside.

Danny eyed Vlad. This setup screamed "trap", and Vlad must have known it. He sent Danny a look that silently promised that he was telling the truth.

"I don't know how the ghost got here," Vlad said. "I just came to my castle to grab some lab equipment and found him. I swear, none of this is my doing."

Danny wondered what kind of ghost was special enough for Vlad to personally call Danny over, then assure him that he had nothing to do with its appearance. Dread settled in his chest. Could this ghost, whoever it is, have anything to do with Clockwork's suitcase?

Danny turned the doorknob and stepped inside.

There was a boy, a monochrome one like Poindexter. This boy was standing by the window, looking out but not really looking. Danny could only see his back, and he had black hair and a lithe form like Danny.

Then he turned around, and Danny realized the ghost _was_ Danny.

Eyes that might have been blue before the color was drained from them gazed back at him from under shaggy black bangs. Danny stood dumbstruck, staring at the lookalike. His first thought was that this might have been a clone, but Vlad had insisted that he had nothing to do with this doppelganger's appearance. He was identical to Danny, right down to every freckle on his skin, but there was also something else about him...an air of sadness deeper than any Danny exuded.

The monochrome Danny's eyes widened when he saw him, and he suddenly covered his face and cowered. "S-stay back!" he cried.

Danny didn't know how to react. Whatever he was expecting the ghost to say, it wasn't that. He carefully raised open palms and said, "I'm not going to hurt you. But why do you look like me?"

The doppelganger glared at him in a way that was halfway between contempt and horror. "You know."

"No, I don't," Danny replied, audibly confused. "Otherwise I wouldn't have asked."

The doppelganger hugged the wall behind him, like he was considering phasing through and escaping. "We split. You k-killed me."

"What?"

No response came, except for the doppelganger turning his head away, like the sight of Danny was too terrifying for him.

Gears turned in Danny's head. A memory surfaced--not quite experienced by himself, but relayed to him by an old man in a distant future within this mansion. Danny swallowed.

He realized he was floating a few inches off the ground, and he made himself land. Even this small movement made his double flinch. Danny then tugged on the warmth that sat next to his core and let it wash over him. The doppelganger's eyes widened as the rings of light spread across Danny and made him transform. A moment later, Danny stood as a human across from his ghostly double. Now they looked completely identical, apart from the black-and-white thing.

"You..." The double's brows knit together. "You're still a halfa."

Danny stepped forward. The doppelganger wasn't quite as scared anymore, but he still watched him with wary eyes. "What's the last thing you remember?" Danny asked.

The doppelganger frowned. "I remember you..." He shook his head and said, "I remember I..."

It seemed to trouble him too much for him to continue. Danny hesitated. Then he asked, "Your ghost half killed you, didn't he?"

The doppelganger flinched. For a while, he stood still except for the trembles that wracked his body, but then he managed to slowly nod.

"That wasn't me," Danny said. "Or...it wasn't my version of me." Man, he was starting to confuse even himself. He took a deep breath, then said, "Your... _Our_ family is alive."

The doppelganger raised his eyes, wide with surprise. "What do you mean? I saw them..."

"The Nasty Burger exploded in your timeline, right?" Danny wasn't sure how he managed to know this Danny came from that timeline, but the more he observed him, the more certain he became. "That was undone. Clockwork--he's a ghost that controls time--he warned me about my future, and I changed it."

The doppelganger stared at Danny. His eyes shimmered with something that might have been hope, but then he shook his head and said, "No. No, I remember. I saw them die. I saw--I saw myself die. All of that happened."

"Look, I don't really understand how timelines work. All you have to know is that none of that happened to me."

The doppelganger eyed him, his gray irises scrutinizing him with suspicion. "How can I believe you? How can I hope?"

Danny tried to think up a response. Then he slipped his hand into his pocket and felt something cool inside. He pulled out the toy rocket he had placed there earlier. The doppelganger watched it with interest.

Danny held it out to him. "This is yours, isn't it?"

The doppelganger gingerly reached over and took it from him. He observed the toy in his palm. "Yes," he said.

Danny looked at the tiny rocket. "I remember when my grandma died," he said. "I was maybe three or four. I didn't understand where her soul could have gone to, if my parents insisted it wasn't the Ghost Zone. They said she was in the sky. Being a stargazer, I logically assumed they meant she went to space, and I would imagine myself as an astronaut, meeting dead people on the moon."

He smiled at that silly memory. However, it only seemed to sadden the doppelganger, who cradled the toy in his transparent hands.

"My spaceship broke," the ghost murmured.

Danny's heart squeezed at the sight of his double. Hearing about his death from the alternate Vlad was painful enough, but seeing the ghost in front of him made the story all the more real. He had killed himself. Phantom had killed Fenton.

Why now? Why would his ghost appear in this timeline, and after so long? The time travel incident had happened months ago, and those months were racked with nightmares, unshakable images of Danny as an amoral ghost destroying the world, including himself. Danny had just gotten over those nightmares, and now here was an apparition of himself, terrified of his ghost half, and it felt like a stitched wound had reopened (and Danny knew from experience how that felt).

The doppelganger's eyes wandered across the guest room. Danny figured it must have been his bedroom after the alternate Vlad took him in. "I didn't pack many things with me," he said. "I thought they would only remind me of what I lost, and that was too painful. So I sold everything. The Guys in White got my parents' lab." He squeezed his toy and added, "I regretted it, of course. Those objects, my family's possessions, were the only things I had to remind me of them after death, and I threw it all away."

"Hey, that's not fair," Danny said. "You had a valid reason not to keep them."

"But it still hurt, even after I left everything. It hurt. I--" The doppelganger turned his face away and said in a quivering voice, "I wanted it to stop. That's why Phantom really killed me. Just before we split, I was thinking about how I just wanted to..."

Die, was the word he didn't say, but Danny understood. He knew it probably wasn't the best thing to say to someone who had killed himself, but he asked, "Did it hurt?"

"Very," the doppelganger confirmed. "It's funny, I wanted to live as soon as I knew I was really going to die. Just one more regret to add to the list. Like causing the end of the world." He lowered his head.

Danny placed a hesitant hand on his shoulder. He probably wouldn't be able to feel it, being a ghost and all, but it was the gesture that mattered. "The world didn't end in this timeline," he told him.

The doppelganger raised his head to meet him. Danny didn't even know ghosts could cry, but twin lines of tears ran down his double's cheeks. They were ectoplasmic tears, stained green, which ironically provided the only color to the monochrome specter.

"There were so many things I regretted doing--and not doing," he said. "You said you changed the future, right? That everything was undone. Can you do differently from what I did?"

"Of course, man," Danny replied, opting not to share the fact that he had indeed spent many sleepless nights filled with anxiety and dread over the possibility that this timeline could end the same as his double's.

The doppelganger apparently had only one request for him. "Did you tell your parents yet?"

Danny would have asked what he meant by that, but he wasn't stupid. He understood immediately what the doppelganger meant. He shook his head.

"That was one of my biggest regrets," the doppelganger said. "That I never told them before they died. You'll promise to tell them, won't you?"

Danny hesitated. Jazz kept telling him to do the same, but he never did. Even after knowing for sure that they would accept him no matter what, he still couldn't get himself to share his secret with his parents. Too many what-ifs played in his head, and he would always tell himself that he could reveal it to them at a later time.

But how could he be sure there would always be a later? His parents were mortals, as his doppelganger so helpfully reminded him. _He_ was a mortal, or at least half-mortal, and for all he knew he might die before his parents ever knew.

The doppelganger was watching him. Danny swallowed. Then he nodded.

"I promise."

The doppelganger smiled, and for the first time since Danny laid eyes on him, he didn't seem so sad. He looked down at his toy spaceship.

"I always wanted to go to space," he said, almost to himself. Then Danny blinked, and he was gone, along with the toy.

Danny turned around and saw Vlad standing in the doorway. For some reason, that irked him. The conversation with himself felt pretty personal.

"How long have you been standing there?" he asked.

Instead of answering, Vlad said, "You won't really tell them your secret, would you?"

Danny rolled his eyes. "So what? It's not like I'm telling them yours."

"But they would know about the existence of half-ghosts, and then it won't be long before they figure out mine."

Danny scowled. He gestured to where his double had been before he disappeared and said, "I just had a conversation with myself from an alternate timeline, who told me that revealing my secret to my parents can possibly prevent the end of the world, and you're worried about yourself?"

Vlad hesitated. "What did he mean by that, anyway? Did you destroy the world without my knowledge?"

Danny held back a growl and turned his back to Vlad. "I came to your mansion. I talked to your ghost, so now I'm leaving. Goodbye."

He transformed into a ghost and left the castle despite Vlad's complaints. As he flew back home, he found himself taking in the scenery on a deeper level, like he knew now that he wouldn't be able to see it forever.

He landed inside his room. He was unsurprised to find that the suitcase from earlier, along with its contents, had disappeared.

Danny detransformed. A moment later, he heard a knock on the door, and his mother poked her head in.

"Dinner's ready," she told him. Then she frowned and added, "Is something wrong?"

Danny wiped at his cheeks. There weren't any tears, but he must have looked sad nonetheless if his mom noticed anything. "No, everything is fine," he said. He could tell that his mom was unconvinced, but she accepted his answer and was about to head back downstairs before Danny changed his mind at the last minute and said, "Actually, Mom?"

She turned back to him. "Yes, dear?"

Danny took in a deep breath to steady his thumping heart. A moment later, he raised his eyes to meet his mom's, and said, "There's something I need to tell you."


End file.
